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Tuesday, 5 June 2012

The Rainbow, The Brownie & The Sunset (2011)

This time, I and Lise went to the island of Smoela, where the fishing is great and the fish are plenty!

Before you start reading, check out this map and ask your self: Where should I start fishing? Oh, feel free to zoom in and see just how much water there is.Now, back to the story. We packed the car up with plenty of stuff to keep us going for two days and headed out to that beautiful island. CC could not join us, since he had a lot of laboratory work to do for his Bachelor.The hard thing was not to stop and do some fishing along the way, because thee are a lot of nice spots along the road....We arrived to Smoela at 19.00 and we decided to start fishing at once. Sea trout was the target fish and a nice spot (of the possible billion) was chosen.

The water was clear, with a nice current that made it feel like salmon & sea trout fishing in a river. On with an olive shrimp and on the third, or was it fourth, cast something takes the fly hard. I hook it nicely and the thing goes crazy. Jumping and pulling like a train. It's something silver and that's always a nice thing. To my surprise and dislike it's a rainbow! A first one for me, but they are not indigenous to Norwegian waters and it's pretty clear that this fellow escaped from a farm. So a quick blow to the head takes care of any harm it could do. We meant to eat it, no point in wasting food, but the fish appeared to be suffering from nephrocalcinosis. So it became sea gull food...After we caught a few small coalfish, we decided it was time to find a place to put up our tent and make camp. We did some fishing after the camp was ready, but caught nothing. Bed time, well sleeping bag time.

Morning, clear skies and a slight breeze. Lise is still in Dreamland while I'm gathering wood and preparing for breakfast. By the time the fire is burning and the tea water is boiling, Lise gets up and joins me by the fire. The breakfast is nice and tasty, as usual, and now was the time to start fishing. Target fish, brown trout.

Before we could do that, we had to buy a fishing license. And the only place to do that was on the other side of the island, so we jumped in the car and got to it. It was almost noon before we got to the fishing spot, but hey, we got the whole day left.

The breeze was making small waves on the lake and there where a few guys I know from Trondheim there, so we decided to fish our way down the small creek that was going from the lake to the sea.

At once we ( means I) saw a few rising fish. None huge, but on light gear (3 and 2 wt) it's all fun). I was the one to catch the first one.

Lise followed quickly with a few fish to. To our delight there was a lot of L.marginata spinners everywhere. Then at 13.55 the L.Marginata started popping up all over the surface. The fish went crazy and so did we. Having fun fly fishing is way above big fish hunting in my book, and fun we did have. Since the day was saved we went to a different lake to see if there was any action going on there. There where a few fish rising, but none of them took anything dry. Who cares, on with a nice tasty dry fly, and they took it every time.

Here are few of them drying in the sun.

Time for lunch. Home made BBQ Ribs, mmmmmmmmmmmmmgood! After lunch we caught a few more trout and before we knew it it was time to head back to camp. There we rested, enjoyed the lovely evening and, of course, cooked a great dish.

With good food in the belly it was a true pleasure to go to bed. Slept like a rock!

Last day, woke up hot like hell. The sun was burning on the tent. That cold water from the creek, running by our camp, came in handy. And as usual we ate a good breakfast, then broke camp and packed up the car. That gave us the possibility to fish as much as possible before having to get back to Trondheim, and not having to mess around with packing when tired from all the fishing.So, out with the map and try to decide where to go..... we chose some lakes closest to our camp. Same thing, lots of spinners and rising fish, but none huge, So we hiked along the lakes, did some recon and caught a few trout each. It was so hot that I had to soak my cap in the water all the time to keep my head cool.

here is a picture of one of the lakes.

Fed up with the heat we went to the only petrol station on the island and got some ice cream, man it was good. After enjoying the ice cream we had to get going if we were to catch the ferry. On the ferry we met the guys from Trondheim, and they too had "poor" fishing. The biggest about 400 grams. They told us that they used Sink 3 lines with nymphs to get fish that size... Well, I and Lise sure as hell didn't want to use anything else but floating lines, otherwise we could just as well fish for sea trout.

All in all it was a great weekend and the first trip with the tent. Next time we just hope for a bit better conditions to see if those big trout are there.